Decorative equipment for atmosphere and using water in the form of jets has been known for a very long time, for example in the form of fountains or other similar structures.
Equipment is also known which uses water drop by drop and, in this respect, specific mention may be made of the following patents: U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,294,406, 4,265,402, BE-A-529 333 and DE-A-3 413 198. The first of these documents describes an illuminated fountain in which drops coming from tubes provided with relatively complex valve devices are illuminated by a stroboscopic lamp in order to obtain various attractive luminous effects for decorative purposes only. The device is highly complex since it requires each of the orifices of a rectilinear water feed tube to be associated with a respective valve having an electronic control circuit. In the second above-mentioned document, which also describes a drop-by-drop decorative device, the water comes from a plane disk and the fall of the water is controlled by means of a vibrating device, the drops being illuminated by a stroboscopic light source and the assembly constituting a fountain in which the drops appear to move along vertical-axis helixes. The fountain described in the Belgian patent is also intended to provide an optical effect by spraying a colored liquid, whereas that described in the German patent is mainly intended for humidifying ambient air and/or cleaning it.
The equipment of the present invention does not stem from the principles on which the above-described embodiments are based. It does not seek to take advantage of purely optical phenomena, and consequently it makes no use of stroboscopic light sources not of optical systems of the type used with illuminated fountains. Nor does it make use of complex means for forming drops of water, nor does it seek to clean the ambient air in the space in which it is installed, such that since it is intended to provide multiple functions, e.g. decoration and air conditioning, and since it is also suitable for acting as a leisure space or even as an accessory means for therapeutic treatment, e.g. thalassotherapy (i.e. salt water treatment), equipment according to the invention is quite different from prior art devices both in the problems which it seeks to solve, or the needs which it seeks to satisfy, and the means implemented for achieving these results.